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It has always been a puzzle why nineteenth century political economists were quite so gloomy. Why did they picture economic actors as motivated so single-mindedly by self-interest? Why did they see ahead the negative effects of diminishing returns, especially falling profit rates and rising rent shares, while all around them the evidence was pointing in the other direction? Why did they go on about the stationary state at a time when technical change was everywhere the norm? This gloom was hardly foreshadowed by the eighteenth century founders of political economy—Hume, Smith, and the Physiocrats (although for a contrary view see Robert Heilbroner 1973). It seems to have begun with Malthus and Ricardo, but it remained strong in the marginalist economists as well. Alfred Marshall and his followers rested their case for the necessity of careful marginal allocation of resources, and the intolerability of the costs imposed by trade unions and other rent seekers, on the ground that there were just not enough goods and services to go around. The notion of scarcity legitimized gloom.

In 1885 John Kells Ingram published a lengthy article on the history of political economy in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and in 1888 he republished this same article, with only minor changes, as a book entitled The History of Political Economy. Ingram unashamedly interpreted the historical development of political economy from a Comtean variant of the historicist perspective, and, for this reason, these publications became extremely important for the methodological debate, known as the English Methodenstreit, then raging between the orthodox and historical economists. Although the historicist message dovetailed into Ingram's historical narrative was clearly contentious and polemical, the reviews of both versions of this history from either side of the conceptual divide were overwhelmingly positive. Two exceptions were damning anonymous newspaper reviews in The Scotsman: one in 1885 in response to the Encyclopaedia Britannica article, and another in 1888 in response to the book. It is apparent from an entry made in the diary of John Neville Keynes that the first of these reviews was written by Joseph Shield Nicholson (JNK, July 28, 1885, Add 7834), and since the articles are strikingly similar in tone, substance, and style, and since Nicholson wrote other reviews for The Scotsman, it is safe to assume that the second article was also written by Nicholson. The substance of Nicholson's critique can be reduced to two main accusations: first, that Ingram was neither qualified to write a history of political economy nor competent to comment on the methodological issues then under scrutiny, and second, that Ingram had brazenly plagiarized passages drawn from various German histories of political economy.

Nearly a half-century has passed since Ronald Meek (1956, p. 63) warned us that Adam Smith's notion of the labor commanded by a commodity in the marketplace is to be understood not as an expression of the “substance” of value, varying “directly with the quantity of social labor used to produce” the object, but rather as nothing more than a unit of value measure with no fixed relationship to the labor “embodied” in production. It was this distinction that he sought to fix in our minds with his memorable image of the magnet. Indeed, it is more than three times as long since John Stuart Mill (1848, p. 568) conveyed the same distinction with his particularly apt metaphor of “the thermometer and the fire.” Further, it is now forty years since Mark Blaug (1959), reminding us of that distinction, returned our attention to Smith's use of his measure as an expression of potential productive capacity (a view advanced earlier yet by Hla Myint 1948, pp. 20–21 and by Meek 1956, p. 65), but one that conveys a subjective dimension as well. Yet in spite of a now widespread concurrence in this reading, the “legend” that Smith's concept of labor commanded is to be understood as expressing, in some way, price ratios proportional to ratios of labor embodied in production remains remarkably resilient.

On September 22, 1994 we signed a contract with Edward Elgar Publishing Limited to edit The Elgar Companion to Classical Economics (ECCE) (Kurz and Salvadori 1998). Dr. Terry Peach accepted our invitation (dated January 10, 1995) to contribute an entry to ECCE by July 15, 1995. He was reminded of the deadline in a letter dated June 19 and again in a letter dated August 28, when we suggested a new deadline of September 30. Our only response from Peach was a letter dated September 5, also to the publisher, informing us that he had “to rescind [his] offer to contribute an entry.” This unexpected withdrawal was justified on the following grounds:

My critical position on the Sraffa-inspired history of economic thought, and particularly on the “Sraffian” interpretation of Ricardo, is probably well known to you. After long deliberation I have decided that I cannot in all conscience make even a minor contribution to a project which, to a pronounced degree, apparently seeks to promote a particular version of the history of economic thought to which I am profoundly opposed.

Professors Kurz and Salvadori seem aggrieved by my review article of their Companion (Peach 1999; Kurz and Salvadori 1998). They give the impression that the article should never have been published, apparently on the grounds that I had “disqualified” myself from writing it: I was not an “unprejudiced reviewer.” At the same time, they pronounce that the article “has not much to offer,” which makes it all the more curious that they should trouble themselves to discredit its author.

In his recent article, Robert Dimand details for the profession the existence of four obscure papers by Irving Fisher (1935, 1936, 1937, 1940). He also brings to our attention two brief Econometrica contributions (Fisher 1946, 1947), neither of which is listed in the American Economic Association's Index of Economic Journals, as he points out. For this, and for his careful discussion of the content of those papers, we are indeed in his debt.